


The Story She Was Never Given

by Dr_Mini_Me



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Hufflepuff, Daily Prophet, F/M, Good Writing, I Didn't Mean Too, Other, Pansy Parkinson never had a chance, Pansy Parkinson-centric, Post-Second War with Voldemort, obviously, weirdly enough theres actually writing tips in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 10:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Mini_Me/pseuds/Dr_Mini_Me
Summary: "Now that I've gotten rid of the readers with idiotically short attention spans and disinterest in detail, allow me to interest such a discriminating reader as yourself in the story that Pansy Parkinson was never given."As this may be a little confusing, this is essentially a short story written up by an anonymous Hufflepuff that had been in the same year as Pansy Parkinson and published just as anonymously.





	The Story She Was Never Given

**Author's Note:**

> A NON-FICTIONAL INTROSPECTIVE WORK OF THE TRAITS CONCERNING PANSY PARKINSON
> 
> BY:   
>  J.L.M  
>  (Better known as the Half-Blood Hufflepuff)

Pansy Nott sat with her daughter in front of a crackling wood fire, she enjoyed this particular time of the day as her four year old lacked the energy but she wasn't fussy just yet. Tonight, her mother was showing her a book of pictures from a darker time and ignoring the burden she'd had to bear, not willing to possibly mar her child's innocence. It'd been a time that she'd all but forgotten, though it was not so long ago but it was before these happy years.

The pair had to be nestled into their favourite great big green velvet chair before opening the dusty book that Amena had pulled off a bookcase. Despite the frayed threads that hung below their seat or the fading emerald green, this was their designated chair for the bedtime routine and it was likely that the family would never attempt to repair it. 

It simply had to be this chair, otherwise it was an unspoken fact that their routine wouldn't finish in time for bed. But, luckily they'd never had such a situation just yet. This was just how their evening went, or else Pansy never quite felt safe enough to simply relax and hold her daughter in her arms comfortably. A creak in the intimidating darkness behind them, a particularly insistent breeze banging against the front door-nothing could hurt her daughter in this chair. 

Pansy and Amena sat down to comb out her hair after a bath and dad worked in his office; he worked on all sorts of little mechanical inventions. While his wife wasn't entirely fond of all the things he'd been tasked to create so far, she was happy enough to have him at home with them most of the time and they were comfortable in their own modest rite.

Their home wasn't as large as the manor's they'd grown up in, of course. But, if all three weren't home it would feel just as hollow and cold as those, no matter how many logs were added to the hearth. This was just simply how it was for the Nott family, and they liked it exactly this way. Anything else felt disorderly, either too crowded or too empty. 

Tonight, their chair felt particularly safe and comfortable in front of the log fire. A chair with its arms and back that stood up against the darkness, curving around them and protecting them from the violence in Pansy's not so distant past. Sturdy oak legs stood upon the floor, holding the pair up despite the years of loving use in various chips that revealed the pale and vulnerable wood underneath the surface. 

A particularly happy shade of pink was abandoned on the floor in the form of a wet towel that had been used to keep her little one safe from the cold. At exactly 6:15, Pansy supervised Amena in her bath. When she'd been three, Pansy gave her that bath. But as with all living creatures, she grew older and at four the girl decided that not only did she want a full tub of water, she also wanted to bathe herself.

Her mother and father agreed, feeling that their child was more than clever enough to do such a thing, but Pansy still sat inside the tiled room with her. 'Just in case something were to happen', she'd said. She'd gotten four deliriously warm and happy years, and she demanded to have at least 100 with her girl. 

Once sat in front of the fire with their book of choice for the night, the towel was left there until they'd finished. Curling into this chair with her child in her lap as she combed gently through her hair, they began their nightly ritual of dictating the past to her little one.

On the day that her daughter had been born, Pansy vowed to protect her child from the horror's of the world as well as she could, but never to deny the child knowledge of them. So thus began her dictations of the past, retrofitted to leave all of the incredibly unsavoury bits out.

"Who are these people?" Amena leaned closer to a picture with a puzzled look in her large brown eyes while her mother stroked her hair slowly.

She'd never seen them before and for once she was sort of glad that she hadn't met these particular people, they didn't look very nice and mummy looked sad next to them. Amena was surprised by tonight's pictures, mummy wasn't waving or smiling at her and dad was nowhere to be found. It was so unlike the other three books of photos that she'd found in her father's office, those were full of her happy parents and a version of her that could do nothing but cry and blink at the viewer.   

Her mother looked at it before turning her gaze back to her daughter's fine black hair. She place the comb back at the crown of her daughter's head and continued to slowly work it through the tangles, careful to not pull too hard. These books not only allowed her to tell her daughter stories about the past, but they also distracted the four year old from the dull and painful process of detangling her wet hair. 

"Some of mum and dad's schoolmates."

The picture had contained a morose teenaged Pansy standing with Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, and Marcus Flint. All five teens wore a bored expression, glancing at the reserved party going on around them. They were dressed in formal robes and held thin-stemmed glasses that she presumed contain some expensive alcohol, courtesy of the Malfoys.

"Dad's there?" Amena turned her body around in her mother's lap to stare in wonder at her mum before glancing back at the teens who ignored the four year old.

"Mhm." She leaned around her, placing a finger on his youthful face. "He's right there." She declared with a soft expression of amusement on her face as her daughter's mouth dropped open in shock.

"But dad doesn't look like that! It can't be him!" Amena shook her head quickly, as though she could deny such a face being her own father's.

"What doesn't dad look like?" Theodore Nott poked his head in through the door that seperated the living room and his office in the Nott's house.

"A little wanker." Pansy grinned at her husband who rolled his eyes. He wasn't the stringy teenager from their days in Hogwarts any more. Instead he'd filled out the spindly limbs into a rather formidable man, one whose face might even be considered attractive if the viewer saw it in passing.

"Whats a wanker?" The child looked curiously between her mother and father's face and surmised that it must be a good thing with a smile of her own.

"It's not a good word, Amena." Her father shook his head, cautioning her from using it.

"You shouldn't say that to your friends unless you want to hurt their feelings." Her mother added in her own word of warning, twisting around the girl's frame to look her in the eyes as if that would convey her seriousness.

"But, what bad thing does it mean?" The child pondered that for a moment and seemed to come to the conclusion that it meant something rude, though she still wanted to know it's true definition.

She felt that while of course she wouldn't use the bad words or curses that her mother had informed her of, she still wanted to know what they meant. How else could she deal with a particularly ignorant wizard or witch if they called someone a mudblood? Her knowledge was her only weapon against the mean things that her mother had dealt with when she'd turned 11. 

"Um. Its a person that masturbates too much." Her father awkwardly provided the definition she'd been seeking after a moment of silence, and she accepted it with a nod.

Amena Brigid Nott was indeed a curious child and very clever. She was already able to piece together complex sentences of things, such as the water cycle, that bored her Muggle classmates in kindergarten. Her parents often felt that they couldn't have been prouder of their gir-

As the writer of this feel-good tale, indulge me in interrupting this entirely fictional domestic picture for a moment.

Did you really think that the Notts would have allowed me to simply sit in their living room and record all of that? 

Are you that surprised that it's entirely fictional? 

I'd imagined so, considering this had been marked as an introversive non-fictional piece of writing.

Don't worry, it is.

But, that scene is merely the work of my sentimental imagination after I'd began writing this piece some years ago. Once or better yet, if you've finished this, you'll likely better understand my sentimental nature.

I'm sure Pansy Parkinson does comb her daughter's hair and I do enjoy imagining that Theodore Nott, a man I find mildly attractive, would flee from the vicinity once his daughter began questioning things of a biological manner. But this scene, isn't real. I've simply strung together a selection of redundant words that made you think it was real. 

It's not that it isn't interesting of course, but the detailing of the picture itself isn't what makes the participants endearing to the viewer in my opinion. The details of actions themselves, the heroes and heroines overcoming a villainously destructive force, the warm crackling fire, a big soft green chair, they're simply words.

Words are just pieces of a picture, but they are just as important as the image itself. They allow us to make an image in whatever way we'd like, and to see it before our very eyes. Of course, writing down 'big green chairs' on a piece of parchment will not spontaneously force a series big green chairs to come into existence. Well, unless magic was used of course. Words, however, are a source of magic unto themselves, in my humble opinion.

Do you disagree, dear reader?

I feel that they allow us to create such things entirely in our minds and that our minds are a space in which infinite things can happen. A simple selection of them dictates the picture as though it'd come from a distant memory. The thrilling tales of knights, men fighting in a tournament, sounds of metal angrily clashing against each other.

Did you just imagine men sword fighting? Possibly in knight's armour?

I think I've made my point. 

Instead of continuing a scene in which a universally disliked witch and wizard deal with child-rearing, allow this sentimental writer to give that scene some "reasoning".

_What "reasoning", and why is it in quotes? Why is the writer stopping to tell me this all of this nonsense?_

You might be yourself asking these very questions this moment. In fact, the writer is 100% sure you've done just that whether or not you meant to.

After all this is all just a voice in your head, isn't it?

So...what might the writer mean by "reasoning"? The writer means Pansy Parkinson's "reasoning", of course, dear reader. Her own personal reasoning for her personality, I'm sure is very different than what I'm about to suggest. The fact that I am merely suggesting is exactly why the word was in quotations in the first place. The following will be my own conjecture, birthed from my own experiences with the witch and some research into her past.

This research is why my suggestions are based on my belief that it is her past that has made her into the woman and mother she is today. Hadn't you begun wondering, before I interrupted the story above, as to why she was so loving?

So tooth achingly motherly?

That was nothing like what the world knows of Pansy Parkinson, the coward who had tried to give Harry Potter to Voldemort, right?

I must assume that you've heard the infamous tales of the Daily Prophet's journalist, Pansy Parkinson before. Otherwise, why would you read a piece that claims to demonstrate her redeeming qualities?

The story above is quite the opposite of her own brutal form of writing and her public image, don't you agree? She wasn't very well-liked in Hogwarts, and that same distaste appears to have followed her as an adult.

Are you utterly confused as to what my point is regarding the woman in popular opinion?

Let me explain, dear reader.

Though, I do persuade you to expect much more of my informal rambling on tangents that you feel have no point in them.

While in my opinion some of that distaste is deserved, one must admit she was good at her job and she made a journalist proud to do such a job. She was uniquely skilled at latching onto particular individuals that were rather popular in the public eye, before she'd pulled them apart and published their dirty secrets as her articles.

Merwyn Finwick, the dishonoured keeper of the Tutshill Tornados, is my first person of interest. He found his own secrets concerning a debilitating dependency on pepper-up potions, on the front page in an article by Pansy. Soon after, he found himself out of a job and in St Mungos for some much needed help.

Celestina Warbeck, the famed singer, also saw her own secrets published in a rather amusing article, if I do say so myself. Warbeck found her ticket sales plummeting after she'd come back from the year she'd taken away from the stage. She'd vehemently denied any allegations concerning a man in her life, much less a pregnancy. 

Pansy had heard of this break and originally thought nothing of it until she'd begun looking into the singer as well as the rumours circulated concerning a secret pregnancy. She'd found it odd that a witch who had spent her life trying to be a singer suddenly took a year off. I'm sure it didn't help that she'd been publicly dismissed by the woman herself as writing "...such vicious slander by a girl who is too stupid to know any better."

Pansy had found information in Finwick's own angry team captain, a man who was sick of his keeper failing to stay awake during the game. She then confirmed it with a less than legal search through Finwick's belongings during a tournament in which the Tornados lost.

She'd also found a disgruntled manager, whose lips opened easily with liquor, and some innocent medical professionals that confirmed the rumour she'd chased after despite the insults and jeers. During Pansy's time in the Daily Prophet, it appeared to it's faithful readers that no secret was safe if Pansy Parkinson was looking into it and she was loyal to seeking nothing but the truth. 

My belief is that her experience with secrets and rumours during her childhood and teens is what makes her so uniquely skilled. Many individuals at the Daily Prophet say that they miss her skills dearly, but that may be simple laziness speaking on their behalf. But, before we delve into the violent depths that makes up Pansy Parkinson, I offer another warning to you, dear reader.

If you'd enjoy the warmth and smiles that came along with the picture of a mother simply combing her daughter's wet hair and explaining the grainy pictures tucked inside a dusty photo album, please put this down. It is not a work that will feature the loving banter of a married couple who seek shelter in each other. 

This will not detail a charming and privileged life of a pure-blood, nor will this leave you with any sort of feelings even resembling happiness. Rather, I imagine that you will be quite disillusioned by the end of this.

If not that, you'll possibly be angry. Perhaps you'll accuse the publisher of spreading lies? Or that they are attempting to produce sympathy for a vile pure-blood supremacist? I must ask that you restrain yourself from furiously scribbling something down and owling a howler. You'll find all of my references at the end of this work, and I assure you that they're reputable. 

Now that I've gotten rid of the readers with idiotically short attention spans and disinterest in detail, allow me to interest such a discriminating reader as yourself in the story that Pansy Parkinson was never given.

Obviously, I am a writer myself. As such, I often feel that many of my characters have lives of their own in the stories I make. It is exactly that which makes us all living beings, and that which makes your readers able to see such a character as though they were alive.

Any good writer can do this, you simply have to assume that the story you're making isn't the first chapter of their life. They've had a full existence until you came along and jotted a bit of it down with your quill, they had parents and hopes and aspirations.

You simply figure those pieces out, whether in the course of your own writing or beforehand, and incorporate all of that into the personality which gives them their voice. We don't decide to jump off a broom in mid air without some sequence of events that dictates we felt that was what made sense for us to do. 

I often wonder if there was, by some chance, a god-like being that had written all of us as characters in their stories. Do keep in mind that I am including Muggles as well as us magical folk. If there were, I feel that it is my duty to criticise them. Not criticise them for everything, of course. They'd given us a great number of amazing things like magic or a parent's unending love for their child.

Such things are indispensable, in my opinion. Magic is apart of my very being, a piece of the puzzle that makes up my person as well as the love my parents gave me as a child. For a parent that loves their offspring will always protect them, even if they feel their parents shouldn't do so any longer. As a mother myself, I felt that their love acts as a child's guardian against all that is wrong in our world, and I must say that Lily Potter is the perfect example of this being taken to the literal extreme.

This is also part of why I feel that I must criticise this mythical writer. If they'd bothered creating Pansy Parkinson at all, why did they rob her of all of that? Was she created only to be hated and tormented? Was she made to simply bully everyone else?

Or rather, if there isn't such a being, then why did her parents deny her such a simple thing as their love?

I suppose I shouldn't be so quick to judge her parents for all that I didn't see them do. They were complicated if nothing else, as all families were in some way. It might be that they did love her but either didn't show it well or didn't know how to show it at all. Perhaps, this was just how pureblood families worked or just conservative families as a whole. 

I can remember my mother's tendency to lean on the fact that she'd come from a large and dysfunctional family and because of that, she withheld her judgement during my rants concerning others at school. She claimed that love made the fearful into the fearless and the weak into strong.

To this day I'm not sure if she'd meant a familial love or if she meant a romantic love and I'd often criticised her for the numerous parents and relationships that all claimed love as they hurt each other. I will maintain that words are the greatest source of magic unto themselves, however, now I do admit that love is as well. 

Situations in my life, whether they were good or bad, have always reminded me of some of her favourite bits of wisdom. In my later years at Hogwarts and especially after I'd begun writing this, I attempted to be model that her same kindness. I'd heard friends of mine dreading the possibility of turning into their parents and that was actually fear of mine as well when I'd been a teenager but, not as much anymore. 

Maybe, dear reader, you'll find her words as wise as I have come to. Maybe they'll help you more now than they'd helped me as a child. Despite the great number of things all shoved into my head, I can still recall these as easily as I can tell you that my own eyes are brown: I made the decision so I must deal with the consequences, and being kind is completely free. 

The first little phrase had been a source of irritation in my youth and honestly, it still was even if she'd technically been right. It felt as though an unseen force was going to out of the sky to smite me for something I'd done, if she said it when I'd done something wrong. It was still ominous if I'd done something good, even if I'd just told her that I'd scored highly in my exams. 

However, the latter started as a source of irritation but since has become a pleasant reminder once I'd gotten past 25. It was a reminder that we all have our own stories, and we all need help sometimes. I'm just as guilty as the next person in the fact that I forget that sometimes, you just get busy and you don't really care if you shove past someone.

When I was a teenager, I rejected it saying that being kind wasn't free whatsoever. In my mind, it'd cost you time and effort which were both rather costly to me when death was around every corner. Maybe it'd even waste your time and effort, leaving you with nothing but a group of girls teasing your attempt. But, in her odd sort of motherly wisdom she'd shrugged my negativity off with a soft smile.

Instead, she often reminded me that being kind was indeed free if you'd let it be. When I questioned her she patiently reminded me of things that it didn't cost you a single pence like complimenting someone's shirt to bring a smile to their face. Her other reminder was that didn't cost you to give someone a hug when they'd had a bad day, typically she'd hugged me right after and I'd stubbornly ignore the fact that it did make me feel better.

My mother was very much the kind of Muggle to give you her last pound if it'd help you. 

Were you expecting this to lead up to me admitting that she'd actually been a 'good' pureblood? 

That she'd been one of the goodies so they weren't all bad?

Or that Pansy Parkinson is actually one of the 'good' purebloods who is tolerant of others?

It's not. But, you'll understand that tolerance isn't everything the Ministry claims later in this piece. 

She'd had a kind heart that I wished I'd appreciated more. I did not have such a thing until I'd gotten old enough to look past my anger and hatred. I like to imagine it was exactly her kindness that grabbed my father's attention, but I'll likely never know for sure.

Of course, my teen angst had been right in a roundabout way. Kindness didn't often pay you back in the form of pounds or galleons. As children, you just sort of assume that because your mother and father were happy, that was all there is to the world. There wasn't a black or a white, there wasn't a rich or a poor, and there wasn't a Muggle or a wizard.  

But, she'd never cared about money or status as long as her daughter was fed, clothed and happy. My parent's marriage had been a long and happy one that was free of those things as far as I could see, which I'm sure is part of why I've never been particularly good at dealing with vicious rumours or secrets like Pansy is. 

Pansy was the only daughter the Parkinsons, an older and conservative couple that enjoyed the status and wealth their blood gave them. While it is evident in their lavish home that she was well cared for as an only child, she was the last of the Parkinson family. One can only assume it is due to this blood based status that her parents weren't as affectionate with her.

Of course, many won't understand the true burden of being the only heir in one of the sacred 28 families and I'm not claiming that I do. I'm only a half-blooded Hufflepuff whose parents were ecstatic that I still visited them. However, I do know that burden deals with the long and upheld tradition of children's individual personalities and dreams being swallowed up whole, leaving behind only replicas of their parents.

Afterall, she was expected to uphold the family's name with grace, dignity, and ambition. I'm sure she'd been well educated on the fact that as their only child, she'd need to find a prospective husband to continue on the tradition. A half-blood like me or even a muggle-born would have raised their eyebrows at such a style of parenting. Children were thought of as innocent little things until they'd begin to develop personality of their own. 

Children don't understand mummy's refusal to hold them in public due to some possible wrinkling or make up. Their minds simply cannot connect those dots and so they get angry, frustrated that they're not getting the affection they wanted. Nor can they really comprehend that they'd been reprimanded and sent to their rooms without a bit of food for the day was all due to the fact that as a child, they didn't understand that they should wait for the picture to be taken or the party to be over. 

This childhood shaped Pansy in more ways than simply acting as though she was above everyone else in Hogwarts. She'd earned several nicknames by the third year like Ice Queen or Bitch. The latter is actually the nastier out of the two, not simply because it was an insult but because it'd been meant in the literal definition of the word. A female dog, particularly because some Ravenclaws heard the description of her having a pug face and deftly applied Bitch to the names they'd call her. 

She was known to have a hideously shrill laugh but, I cannot confirm not deny that, dear reader. I'd only ever seen her laughing in the company of Draco Malfoy in my time in school. He was the sole the Malfoy heir, if you live under a rock but somehow have access to this by chance. 

Outside of that, I'd rarely spoken to her and it seemed that she'd often simply ignore that I existed. I realise how harsh that sounds. Or maybe you feel that sounds exactly like her? But what you don't understand, dear reader, is just how odd that was. 

Do you understand why yet?

Any time I'd seen her in public, she'd been shouting insults left and right at anyone who looked at her with anything less than admiration. If she was alone, she'd give me a smile in passing but if it were in the Great Hall, the library, or in the halls with her gang of gaggling Slytherins, she'd ignored me even if I stared at her. 

She wasn't friendly, nor was she easy to approach and somehow I thought I was different. I'd felt hurt, I am a Hufflepuff through and through but I often failed to uphold the idea of being a nice person. But, then I'd gotten smarter about it. I observed her, as much as I could without becoming an outright creep. She was ferociously protective of Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy but they weren't her friends perse. The three of them were closer to being brothers in arms, if that made sense, but it was exactly that which worsened her reputation.

Ironically, I can recall a time in which Pansy was desperate for friends it was our first year to be exact. She tried speaking to the other houses in classes but failed to connect. I'd personally met her in the library where she'd been working on an essay by herself. This was only a short while before Malfoy enters this picture.

She'd been soft spoken, friendly, and excited to talk about a boy in my house I mentioned that was sweet enough to bring me cookies on Sundays. She was kind to me at that time and after I'd started this novel I have often wondered whether or not she'd have been different in our later years if she'd had a true friend. I've actually never shared that piece of information with anyone until this work out of fear my mother would read this. 

Don't be mistaken by my rather sad detailing of her parent's cold attitude or my regret for her lack of friends, that was simply the way it was. This isn't my attempt at a call for sympathy nor is it me asking for forgiveness on her part and yes. I, at 42 years old, didn't want my mum reading about me being shitty to someone who obviously needed a hand to pull her up. 

Instead of all of that, this is to demonstrate that Pansy had to forcibly grow up in the number of hours after her outburst. She dealt well enough with her classmates ostracising her as a complete and united group, her house turned and left ratherly calmly before Voldemort launched his attack on Hogwarts.

She'd been terrified, and I couldn't blame her for being scared and panicking. She'd been given an ultimatum and she'd attempted to offer a single life in exchange for hers and hundreds of others with a shout and shaking hands. It sounds logical at first, one life for return for hundreds, but she will never be remembered as being logical. I feel that it was that exact moment, in the Great Hall, which caused the name Pansy Parkinson to be remembered with such revulsion and hatred.

When Harry Potter had submitted to Voldemort, he wasn't remembered as being logical. He was a hero simply because, instead of a single Slytherin trying to sacrifice him, he'd made the choice to save others and sacrificed himself. I do admit that when I'd heard her trying to force him to go, I felt that she was cowardly and possibly quite vile just as everyone else had but, this isn't about me.

This is Pansy's story. It's the thrilling tale of how she changed, matured, and took on an entirely different burden that she'd been born with in literally a few hours. She decided to take on the burden of the Hero.

What is that burden exactly? I imagine that Harry Potter or Hermione Granger would be better suited to dictate that but, for the sake of this novel, I've taken personal liberties in detailing what the burden of a hero means.

The burden dictates that you continue fighting when you're not sure you'll win. You fight with the hope you'll win if you continue, of course, but mainly you do so because you're loyal to your classmates and you know that they are doing the same for you. You bond over that shared loyalty to not stop fighting for your lives, and eventually...Well, you might even call each other friends.

_Is that really being loyal? Or just that not wanting to die?_

Ah. Those are good questions and you're quite right to raise them, dear reader. I believe that the answer lies in what one does after death isn't a threat anymore. If one were to take part in a fight such as the one we'd been forced into, I imagine you could just leave as Draco Malfoy had done. But, Pansy Parkinson didn't do that.

Do you doubt me?

You shouldn't if you've lasted this long, dear reader.

She returned when the shields were failing and our classmate's bodies mixed with the rubble that was left of the school's attempts to protect us. In fact, it wasn't just her that had returned, I saw several Slytherins during the battle.

However, I can only vouch for her presence when she'd had my back after the shields began to fail and the Voldemort's followers began pushing their way in. Her presence was literally what saved my life, I'd been too preoccupied by the death eater in front of me to look behind me in time.

You may doubt me, and you're free to do so as this novel wasn't for you.

Did you still think I'd create this just so you'd feel some remorse for her predicament? 

I imagine that quite a few of my more objective readers will be looking for some sort of evidence that she hadn't ran, and I can offer nothing tangible. I can only offer you my own memory of looking over my shoulder and finding her right there, deflecting curses and firing them back. She did that, just as I did the same for her, and there were moments that I'd considered that we weren't going to win this but she was still right behind me so I pushed on. 

I'd spoke with her later, after the curses had stopped flying over our heads and the walls stopped crumbling as badly. She was just as sweet and kind as I'd remembered but, her eyes weren't as bright as they'd been that night in the library. I imagine that part of this was due to the fact that we were in the tail end of a war but, I felt guilty. Her skin was pale, her hair was cropped, and she looked tired but not in the physical sense of the word.

From my position, and please do keep in mind that I was closer to a piece of furniture than an actual person in most of my Hogwarts years, it'd seemed that no one had ever stopped to ask if she was okay. I don't know if I'd ever considered asking her before I saw her protecting me just as I protected her, I think everyone assumed she lacked the ability to feel.

She'd become abrasive in every sense of the word the year after she'd been sorted into Slytherin and if I had to guess, it was thanks to the never ending rumours circulating. I'd heard a few: she'd slept with every boy in Slytherin, she was cheated on by Draco Malfoy.

After I'd begun looking into her past, I found myself considering scrapping this entire thing altogether when she didn't respond to my letters full of questions and notifying her as to what my book would be about. It felt like these were the possible reasons for why she wasn't responding. I already understood her lack of marriage to Malfoy though at the same time, her dirtied image stemmed from him.

_Why would Draco Malfoy not marrying her matter?_

Well, dear reader, he married Astoria Greengrass. Yes, I know she was lovely and that you probably already know this. She was the perfect image of a tolerant pure-blood all the way up to her death, don't you agree? 

A soft voice, her elegant clothes, an interest in freedom for house elves. A complete turnaround from those dark and disturbed supremacists of the past, right?  She cared for their child in public and their son was just perfectly behaved, amazing really.

In fact, their marriage was full of romance according to the media. Draco standing up to his disapproving and conservative parents to overthrow their constricting traditions and all for his wife who spouted the new and approved version of tolerance. But it is exactly their perfect marriage that gave him his sudden ascension from the dirt all the way up to being a poster child for the tolerant pure-bloods of today. 

Draco Malfoy, would have been the ideal husband for Pansy Parkinson in a traditional sense, and I have no doubt that she knew that as well as her parents. Unfortunately, she wasn't the perfect wife for him. She'd likely slept with him in their years at Hogwarts, and Greengrass had stayed the pristine yet uninterested girl who hadn't shouted in the Great Hall. 

Did you never wonder where she'd been throughout Voldemort's attack? She was only two years behind Pansy and her sister. There were 14 year olds who had taken up their wands, so please consider that a pure-blood 16 year old could do the same. And, perhaps she did. I'll never know.

Though, I am vaguely amused by the rumour that she'd somehow gone back in time via a time-turner to conceive a child with Voldemort. And, no. I do not believe she did but, the idea that anyone could possibly sleep with him is funny to me.  However, to state what I'm hinting at explicitly, Astoria redeemed Malfoy while Malfoy dirtied Pansy. She gave him a warm and human side that quickly won over the public. 

Theodore Nott was not as redeeming but, in part, I think thats why I find their marriage to be so much more real. There were no public announcements, no press invited to their vows, and no articles concerning the birth of their daughter. They simply married and that was that. 

I often wish that I had kept in touch with Pansy after the war but, we were all healing from the violent process that had taken children and spat out paranoid adults. She may have wished that I had but, I think thats simply just a wish from the back of my mind.

I do realise that she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and I'm not trying to do that for her, rather I am expressing one of my sincerest regrets. I didn't uphold my house's values nor did I do anything that would have made my mother proud. Hufflepuff's are meant to be hard-working, friendly, loyal, honest and rather impartial and I was not. 

I judged her just as fiercely as everyone else, I'd heard the rumours of her eating disorder and that she'd gotten around and I hadn't spread them. But...I didn't even try to stop them or find out if they were true. She'd become some sort of mythical creature that everyone got a bloody good laugh out of and ignored when she'd began insulting them. I was not a popular student by any means and it wasn't just me, rather it was that most Hufflepuffs blended into the background. The fact that I had heard these rumours is to inform you, dear reader, that it means everyone knew them. 

So many years have passed since then and I suppose she just didn't want to speak with me. It doesn't matter how many fancy words I string together to illicit the images of warmth and love, or my attempts to acknowledge a reader's potential question. Her story, the one she'd never truly gotten, was sad and incredibly short once you take out all of my own sentiment and remorse.

She'd written a few articles for the Daily Prophet as I mentioned earlier but after the birth of her daughter, she'd left. I like to imagine that she'd done it specifically for her daughter but I imagined it was to due to the boxes of dead rats she kept receiving. Such things weren't uncommon at the Daily Prophet but, according to her coworkers, she received at least one every single day and two on Mondays to make up for the weekend. 

Outside of the media, it was even shorter.

She married Theodore Nott in 2007.

They'd had a daughter in 2008.

Theodore Nott was arrested by Harry Potter in 2020.

That is all, dear reader.

That is all there is to say about the woman who saved my life during the Battle of Hogwarts and this is my poor attempt to repay her. 

 


End file.
